


The Colour Purple

by LittleSixx



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Captain Hook | Killian Jones In Love, F/M, Falling In Love, Gap Filler, Inspired by Fanfiction, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSixx/pseuds/LittleSixx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan as told through objects of sentimentality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Colour Purple

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Of Velvet and Silk, Cotton and Cashmere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755377) by [cwb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cwb/pseuds/cwb). 



> I so loved the format of "Of Velvet and Silk, Cotton and Cashmere" I wanted to try it. I also had a great need for Captain Swan fluff and Emma character exploration (goodness knows we haven't been getting that on the show). 
> 
> Comments and critiques always welcome!

I. 

Emma Swan’s parents abandoned her in the softest blanket. In her first moments in this new realm, she was cushioned and sheltered in a cocoon of fuzzy warmth. It was made of the cream-coloured wool of some animal from another land, almost silk to the touch, Emma’s name embroidered in purple thread on a corner. Baby Emma could hardly distinguish between it and her mother’s arms. Even in the arms of sever-year-old August—or Pinocchio as he had been called—Emma was safely swathed.

  
II. 

At age three, the first of many new foster families gave Emma a purple crayon. It came in a box of sixty-four with a sharpener, but she only cared for the purple. The sixty-three others sat untouched and Emma’s blanket lay folded on the edge of her drawing table. She carefully mimicked the letters as she saw them. “E – m – m – a,” her foster mom had said. At three, Emma knew her name and her blanket would be the only things in life to never change—the two things her family, her real family, provided. She scribbled the letters dozens of times each day, “E – m – m – a,” and hid the purple crayon under her pillow at night. Over and over and over, “E – m – m – a, E – m – m – a, E – m – m – a, E – m – m – m – a” until she could do it in every colour of the rainbow with her eyes closed.  


III. 

Emma got a tattoo at fourteen. It wasn’t legal, it probably wasn’t safe, but it was rebellion. The girl who did it had eight piercings of various sizes in each ear in addition to the one through her tragus. “I think I’ll get a Marilyn next,” she mentioned. Not that Emma could be bothered to care as she stared at some official cleanliness certification framed on the wall. The lines of the flower were thin and purple; the nagging pain in her wrist lasted only fifteen minutes. She rushed out the door, not leaving a tip, hands on her knees, breathing as though she’d spent those painful minutes running. A friend or a family would never have let her do something so reckless, but that was the purpose: to be everything her birth family wouldn’t want her to be. She slowly abandoned that Emma, the princess she could be, just as that world abandoned her. She walked home, then, to brush the taste of stale air from her teeth, absentmindedly rubbing the bandage on her wrist.

IV. 

Emma was eighteen when she stole the yellow bug. That is, if you can steal something that’s already been stolen. A man named Neal, who belonged in this world as little as Emma, made her feel loved for the first time. He understood childhood rebellion and how to steal for survival. That was why she loved Neal—he understood her, for a time at least. Then he took the bug and left Emma to take the fall for a crime she didn’t commit. He gave the VW back while she was in jail, but it was too late. That was just like Neal, though. He’d leave and try to fix it too late. Love had been all too rare in Emma’s life, but Emma loved the bug. Yellow was, after all, a happy colour.  


V. 

Her twenty-eighth birthday wish was granted—Emma wasn’t alone. Her son—Neal’s son—appeared from nowhere with a book. That book brought them closer, but even as Henry pointed out everyone in it (and their Storybrooke counterparts), Emma felt a pang of sadness that her picture never appeared. Henry’s book, it seemed, was another world in which she didn’t’ belong. She was there as a baby, wrapped in ethereally soft threads, embroidery replicated in perfectly purple ink. She had the blanket, but twenty-eight-year-old Emma Swan was no princess. Not even in her son’s fantasy world. If he couldn’t see the princess in her, who could?  


VI. 

Just as Emma felt she could fall in love again, it died in her arms. It would’ve been work to love Sherriff Graham, but it would’ve been nice. After a decade without love, chasing after those who didn’t know how good they had it, Emma took no sentiment lightly. She was given his boots and kept them at her desk. A reminder to appreciate what she has, Emma would say. She wrapped one shoelace around her wrist, covering her flower tattoo. Those first couple days were rough. She wore the lace in the shower because taking it off felt like leaving those few nice memories behind. As days passed, Emma took it off to shower. Soon after, she no longer wore it to bed. She put it on like jewelry in the morning, and took it off the same. Graham and her memories became routine, something to think on fondly, but not to long for anymore.  


VII. 

Trapped in Rumpelstiltskin’s cell by Captain Hook, Emma believed herself bonkers. Hook had understood her far too quickly, and she couldn’t trust anyone able to parse out hidden secrets so easily. Emma’s heart was in her stomach because she knew he was truthful when saying he wouldn’t have abandoned her. Everyone she’d ever loved had left her alone in one way or another. Everyone from the time she was wrapped in that impossibly creamy blanket. Why should Captain Hook be any different? But things were different, then. A scroll tucked away in an unnoticed cranny, scrawled in purple ink so dark it was near black, “Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma,” over and over and over again.  


VIII. 

The magic bean made her believe it was okay to love again. If it could work with anyone, if she could be safe in love with anyone, it would be Hook. The magic bean, promised to save Storybrooke, instead brought Emma to her son. Hook brought it back because he was an honourable man who didn’t leave people behind. Because he couldn’t leave. This bean was neither dead nor useless as he’d suggested Emma was. They were hurt, but that bean was a promise and that bean was an adventure into the past that felt like salvation.  


IX. 

“You cut quite a figure in that dress, Swan,” Killian said. Over thirty years in the past, Emma was at King Midas’s castle in a dress the colour of a Coke can. Her lips the same shade, long sleeves covered her toned arms and the corset clung tightly to her torso. Killian worked tirelessly to keep his eyes away from her chest, but Emma caught him slipping a few times. On Earth, women dreamt of a “little black dress moment.” In that red dress, Emma felt, for the first time, like the princess she was. “Your highness, you appear to be a natural.”  


X. 

Emma Swan had never felt confident about her future until her thirty-first birthday when Killian Jones presented her with a simple, pear-shaped, amethyst ring. He’d said as they stood on the ocean shore, “Emma, love, d’you know how much I hated you for abandoning me on that beanstalk?” Emma stared at the sun as it sank below the horizon, turning the sky lilac. She shrunk a little, as always, at the memory before nodding. Killian continued, “I wanted to hate you so badly, but I couldn’t. It was impossible because you were the most wonderful creature I’d ever laid eyes on. I didn’t hate you at all. From the moment I met you, I thought if I were to love anyone after my first love, my Milah, it would be someone like you. Dagger to my throat, love, and I wanted it to be you.” Emma chuckled. “It’s always you, it’ll always be you, and I hope you continue to see the best in me as long as we both shall live. If the past is anything to go on, that may be a long time.” She giggled again. “For as long as I can remember, the water has been my home, but now it’s you. Everything I want is you, as you are. I don’t want to take your freedom or anything except the love you give me. So, Emma Swan,” he knelt on the rocky surface, “Will you marry me?” She never said yes, just nodded furiously as tears threatened to overwhelm her well-tested poker face. Killian slipped the purple and silver ring onto her finger before Emma grabbed his jacket and kissed him like their first.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and criticism are always appreciated!


End file.
